


Snapshots Of A Train Wreck

by momentinsubtext



Series: A Different Sort Of Finale [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2223570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentinsubtext/pseuds/momentinsubtext
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor doesn't burn the Master's body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots Of A Train Wreck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aformofmotion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aformofmotion/gifts).



> Cross-posted from my Teaspoon account.

By the time he carries the Master's body back to the Tardis it's dark outside. All the civilians have been escorted back to the planet -including Martha, who has chosen to remain with her family until the Tardis is fixed- leaving only a few of the UNIT officers on board. And Jack, whose sole task seems to be staring at the Doctor worriedly while staying quite out of his way.  
  
Twice, those UNIT officers try to stop him; once with words that he ignores and once by standing in his path. (He is undeterred, dispatches them both easily and carries on. Behind him, Jack looks impressed despite himself.) When he reaches the Tardis he fumbles for the door and nearly drops the Master. It's the first time his expression has changed in hours. Jack moves past him and opens the door, is almost relieved when the Doctor's face goes back to that blank, faraway stare.  
  
The Doctor ignores him, or maybe doesn't really see him, just walks inside and lays the Masters body down on the single couch (if it can be called that) in the console room reverently. He arranges the Master's limbs carefully and remains kneeling at his side, his head resting on the corpses shoulder. After a while he begins to shake silently.  
  
(Jack wants to comfort him, but he knows better. He doesn't think the Doctor notices him leave.)  
  
  
  
He doesn't even begin to repair the Tardis the first week, just kneels beside the Master's body, occasionally weeping and mumbling to himself. She's inside his head, always, screaming in pain and outrage. He ignores her, thinks that would make the Master happy.  
  
Jack brings him food from time to time, which he thinks is rather unnecessary but maybe that's what Jack needs so he doesn't protest. Sometimes Jack talks at him, tries to tell him what's going on outside. He doesn't care, but he listens anyway. Sometimes he thinks Jack tinkers while his back is turned, soothes his tortured ship. Part of him wants to tell the man to stop, but he can't summon the strength. The last day Jack comes is the day UNIT transports the Tardis back to Earth.  
  
  
  
The repairs take weeks upon weeks when he finally starts them. He doesn't like to leave the Master's body alone for long, even just on the other side of the console. Slowly, and piece by piece, he brings his magnificent timeship back to what she was. It's mindless work, and when he's finished he doesn't know quite what to do with himself.  
  
"Wake up," he whispers, clutching the Master's hand. "Please, I know you're in there, just wake _up_."  
  
When the Master doesn't, he throws the Tardis into the vortex.  
  
  
  
He props the Master up, keeps him standing against the console while he fumbles for the latch. The console clicks open and they stare into the shiny, glowing heart of the Tardis. Well, the Doctor stares, the Master mostly just sways and nearly falls in.  
  
After ten uneventful minutes the console clicks shut again and the Doctor sinks to the ground.  
  
  
  
The Doctor falls asleep on the floor beside the Master and wakes up with grate-marks imprinted on his face. He winces as he pries himself up from the floor, gingerly touches his cheek. On the whim, he grabs the Master's hand, uses it to trace those new marks on his skin; every crisscrossing line, over and over again, until they begin to fade. When he realises what he's doing he stops, stares at the Master.  
  
"Well, that won't do," he says. "Won't do at all." He strokes the Master's hair. "Not nearly grand enough, is it?"  
  
He lifts the Master and stumbles, unused to the weight. Slowly, he makes his way to the medlab, lays the Master down on the nearest sickbed. In one of the massive drawers of medical implements collected from all over the universe, he finds a functional laser scalpel.  
  
"What do you think?" he asks, twirling it through his fingers. He sighs at the Master's silence and gets to work. When he's finished, the Master's name is written up his arm in as many languages as he can think of, the Gallifreyan script burned directly into his palm.  
  
  
  
He moves the Master to his bedroom. A proper bed will be more comfortable if he intends to carry on sleeping, after all. He's getting more comfortable with the idea of leaving the Master alone; some days he even takes his tea in the kitchen. When he inevitably collapses into unconsciousness himself, it's on the floor beside the bed. He dreams of fire and blood and the drumbeat of their four hearts.  
  
He knows what the Master wants from him.  
  
  
  
He must look worse than he feels, if the look Lucy is giving him is any indication. The Tardis takes up most of the space in the tiny cell, but she still tries to move away from him.  
  
"Lucy, Lucy, Lucy," he says slowly, not moving from the doorway.  
  
"W-what do you want?"  
  
"It's not what I want, Mrs. Saxon, it's what _he_ wants."  
  
"You're mad," she says.  
  
"Am I?" He considers. "Well, maybe I am at that. Still-"  
  
Lucy sighs. "What does _he_ want, then?"  
  
He smiles, and it's clearly the first time in a long while, holds his hand out to her. She takes it.  
  
  
  
"You've heard the story of Sleeping Beauty, haven't you, Lucy?"  
  
She gives him an odd look and laughs, not unpleasantly. "Oh, you don't really think-"  
  
He shakes his head. "Not really, but... all the same. It's just the sort of crazy stunt he'd pull, don't you think?"  
  
Reluctantly, she has to admit he's right. "I'm going to feel ridiculous." The Doctor shrugs. "Alright, but when it doesn't work for me, you have to give it a go."  
  
  
  
Soon enough, he and Lucy fall into a sort of rhythm. One of them sits with the Master at all times. At night, Lucy sleeps on the bed with him, one arm thrown around his middle. The Doctor sleeps on the floor beside them. Day by day, Lucy slips further back into the state the Master had left her in, her lucidity bleeding away.  
  
"Harry used to sing me to sleep," she says, laying in the dark. The Doctor's eyes don't leave the ceiling, but he begins to hum. "That's better."  
  
  
  
"We need milk," Lucy says as she sits down in the chair they've moved in beside the bed.  
  
"Okay," the Doctor says, releasing the Master's hand. "I'll go get some."  
  
"Don't pay for it," she says. "He'd like that."  
  
"I imagine he would," the Doctor says softly.  
  
He doesn't pay for the milk.

  
  
He runs into Jack when they land in Cardiff to refuel. Or, rather, Jack runs into him. He's in the console room, tinkering and monitoring the fuel intake, when Jack walks in. Lucy had asked to be left alone with her husband, and he'd seen no reason not to comply.  
  
"Doctor?" Jack asks hesitantly when he doesn't look up.  
  
"Jack," the Doctor says, unsurprised. He meets Jack's eyes across the room and Jack takes a step back, frightened by what he finds there. The Doctor's lips curl upward in a facsimile of a smile.  
  
"Are you-?" Jack stops, shakes his head. "What's happened to you?"  
  
"Lucy says I'm mad."  
  
Jack's eyes flicker at the mention of Lucy, but he says nothing about her. "And are you?"  
  
"It's a definite possibility," he admits. "Tea?"  
  
"No," Jack says, inching toward the door. "I don't think so."  
  
  
  
"You're too good for him," Lucy says one day. He blinks, not understanding, and she laughs. "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor-"  
  
"Lucy, Lucy, Lucy."  
  
She rolls her eyes. "My Harry is _evil_ , silly. And he's hardly going to change."  
  
"I am," he realises. Lucy nods. "Why didn't I see that?"  
  
"That's what I'm here for."  
  
  
  
"I created a paradox today," the Doctor says proudly.  
  
"Did you?" Lucy continues filing her nails without looking up. "That's nice."  
  
" _Lucy_ , look," he whines. "I brought him a present."  
  
She stifles a shriek when she sees what he's carrying. " _What_ is _that?_ "  
  
"It's a Reaper's head." He beams at her. "I had it stuffed and mounted. Do you think he'll like it?"  
  
"He'll love it," she assures him, plucking it from his fingers. "What did you do with the rest of it?"  
  
He frowns. "I left it there to be destroyed by the others. Was that wrong?"  
  
Lucy grins at him. "Absolutely."  
  
  
  
The next time they land in Cardiff, Jack finds Lucy in the kitchen before he finds the Doctor. She tilts her head at him curiously. "I think we need to start locking the doors again."  
  
"I have a key," Jack reminds her.  
  
She nods. "Yes. I remember that."  
  
"Is the Doctor here?"  
  
"He's sleeping now." She stands up and walks toward Jack, who steps backward into the now closed door. She giggles. "Can I take a message?"  
  
"I don't think so," Jack says, grinding his teeth.  
  
Lucy lays one hand on his chest and the other on his cheek. "You were my Harry's favourite toy." She turns around and stalks back to the table. "I think you should leave now."  
  
  
  
"Harry said when we ruled the universe, he'd blow up a sun for me," Lucy says. "He promised it would be beautiful, just like me."  
  
"Did he now?" the Doctor asks, running his fingers through her hair. She doesn't shake him off.  
  
"I don't want to wait until he wakes up, Doctor." She turns around and pouts at him. "It's not fair.  
  
"It rarely is." He looks her over. "Don't tell me that worked on him?"  
  
"Sometimes." She continues to pout, hands behind her back.  
  
He laughs. "Fine, fine. You want a star, you'll get a star. Planets?"  
  
"People?" she asks hopefully.  
  
He swallows a lump and is surprised. He'd thought he was getting over these minor moral quibbles. "If you insist."  
  
Lucy claps her hands and jumps up and down.  
  
  
  
"Why don't you wake up?" the Doctor murmurs, resting his chin on the bed. He runs his fingers idly up and down the Master's arm. "I'm doing all the right things. Or, rather, the wrong things. Yesterday, Lucy said I was coming along even quicker than she did." He frowns. "Come to think of it, I don't know if that was a compliment or not." He goes silent, but doesn't take his eyes off the Master, not even when Lucy walks in behind him.  
  
"Have you tried begging?" she suggests after a minute. The Doctor turns his head to stare at her. "He likes begging. And screaming."  
  
"Lucy-"  
  
She holds up her hands. "I'm gone. You have your 'alone time' or whatever it is you're doing."  
  
He throws a pillow at the closing door.  
  
  
  
The third time they land in Cardiff, it's the Doctor who seeks Jack out, and puts a bullet through his brain. He drags Jack's body back to the Tardis and strings him up on the wall, beneath the Reaper's head.  
  
"Artistic," Lucy comments from her place on the bed. She runs her fingers through the Master's hair and looks up at him through her lashes. "My Harry would approve, I think."  
  
The Doctor flushes, looks away.  
  
"Do I get to play with it, Doctor?" she asks. "When it wakes up, I mean. It's not going to be any fun right now."  
  
He sighs, tugs Jack's head up. "He's awake."  
  
"Doctor," Jack says, eyelids fluttering.  
  
"Jack." He releases Jack's head and takes a step back, finally looks at the man. "You haven't changed. Not that I expected you to." He smirks.  
  
"You have." Jack clearly is not impressed. "What's happened to you?"  
  
"Nothing. Everything." He spreads his arms and falls back on the bed beside Lucy, his head landing on her breasts. One of her hands flutters up, her fingers curling in his hair. He tips his head up to look at her. "Are you bored?"  
  
" _Very._ Can I play with it now?"  
  
He rolls over to let her out, pulls a pair of earplugs out and snaps them on. "Have at it, then." She gave him a look. "What? The Master might have a thing for screams and begging, but I don't have the stomach for it. Wake me when you're done."  
  
  
  
He's getting used to the feeling of bones breaking in his hands. It's almost getting boring, really. Once, he and Lucy make a game of seeing who can break the most of Jack's bones, one at a time, before his body resets. Lucy wins, and the Doctor doesn't feel like playing again.  
  
For a few days, he amuses himself by carving the Master's name into Jack's skin in every language he ever knew. But soon he runs out of languages, and Jack is like an etch-a-sketch. He doesn't scar, and what's the point if it's not permanent?  
  
"I should have started with you," he says conversationally, though if Jack makes a reply he can't hear it. "Gotten my practice in, gotten a taste for blood, then gone on to the real thing. I've done this all backwards. In a _minute_ , Lucy." He scowls. "You've made me forget what I was going to say." He looks at his watch, then rolls his eyes at her. "Really? I know we're not exactly the poster children of good behaviour, especially not recently, but you couldn't wait another minute and a half for it to be your turn?"  
  
Lucy shrugs, says something he can't hear but imagines includes the word "evil". He flops back onto the bed and waves his hand vaguely.  
  
  
  
"Do you suppose," Lucy says one day, sitting at the foot of the bed, "you could kneel to me the way you kneel to Harry?"  
  
The Doctor drops to his knees almost immediately, rests his chin on her knee. "Like this? I don't see what good it will do."  
  
"It's pretty," she says, threading her fingers through his hair. "That's all. I thought it would be nice."  
  
Jack makes a disgusted noise and Lucy kicks her shoe at him, her heel impaling itself in his chest. The Doctor and Lucy look at it curiously.  
  
"Were you aiming for the heart?"  
  
"I missed a bit," Lucy admits.  
  
"Um, yeah. Really."  
  
  
  
He kills Lucy in her sleep, decorates her body with scribbles. Most of them are useless, idle markings, but he signs her when he's done. Carves his own name into her forehead, not the Master's as he's been doing. He cries for an hour straight the next day, then dumps her body.  
  
Jack refuses to even look at him anymore.  
  
  
  
One day, the Master opens his eyes.


End file.
